Wolves for boars, Guns for fire
by Faldon113
Summary: Modern day Lord of the Flies, exploring human nature and how its not just kids that can fall to the darker side of human nature. Written for class.


_Wolves for Boars, Guns for Fire_

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Kaine's commanding officer had promised her that this trip would be easy. A vacation after everything that had happened in the war zone. Two week backpacking trip through the wilds of Canada, he'd told her excitedly. What could be better? It would be quiet, relaxing, safe. The exact opposite of everything she'd been facing the past few months.

So she'd gone. The group was larger than she'd thought it would be, with fifteen civilians and four other soldiers, plus the tour guide, but it was smaller than she was used to. After a Company of over one hundred soldiers, a group of twenty-one was slightly new. Not in a bad way, but strange all the same.

The first few days had been nice. Peaceful, as promised. The guide, an old Salish man, clearly knew his craft and kept everyone safe and content. He was especially fond of Kaine, calling her Fire Girl for her bright red hair. It was the first thing to make her laugh in more time than she cared to admit. Over the first few days she learned a lot from him, about how to survive in the forests of Canada. He would often laugh and remind her that she was supposed to be relaxing, but it was hard. Months upon months of knowing that the slightest misstep, eating just one bad plant, could kill her had left the young soldier almost obsessive in learning survival. She soaked it up like a sponge, ignoring the others poking fun at her.

Then everything went wrong. An earthquake had hit hard and fast in an area that had almost no history of earthquakes. The guide had been too close to the edge of the steep path. Kaine had tried to catch him, but hadn't made it. He fell with a horrible cry and they all knew he wouldn't make it back up.

Things were hard after the death of the guide. Where before the group had been united, they were all suddenly fracturing in very dangerous ways. Arguments sprung up over everything from direction of travel to amount of water that should be drunk at one time. The soldiers tried to keep order, though they openly spurned Kaine when she tried to help. One jeered that she couldn't possibly know anything of value, as she had only ever been a member of the reserves. "Leave this to the real soldiers," he sneered. Quietly, Kaine backed away, hiding her seething behind a mask of calm. This wasn't a case of rank or profession. It was a matter of survival and that was not a trait unique the active duty.

The group remained stagnant, not leaving the small open space they'd reached just before the quake. Some suggested they all try to retrace their steps, but the path had vanished in the shaking of the earth. Others wanted to use the stars to find their way, but none knew enough about star charts to do more than figure out which was was north. The land was strange to them all and dangerous, filled with wild animals. Wolf cries and wildcat shadows were not uncommon, leaving the people afraid to sleep at night. Unable to go back, unwilling to go forward, they stayed still and started to lose themselves.

Slowly, the two soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, Max and James, gained control of the group. They kept assuring everyone that the situation was not as dire as it seemed. Every member of the group had loved ones that would miss them when they didn't come back at the end of the two weeks. Scientists had to know about the earthquake, and relief forces were probably already on the way. All they had to do was keep calm and act like rational adults, following the law and order of the civilized world. There were more than enough supplies and the soldiers knew how to build shelters. They had weapons to hunt with or scare off wild animals, if needed. Everything would be fine.

Kaine wasn't so sure. While she agreed with Max and James, she wasn't stupid enough to think that everyone did. The soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, Marcus and Jack, were especially troublesome. While Max and James focused more on surviving where they were, Marcus and Jack thought that the group should keep moving, trying to find their way to civilization on their own. It would have been a fine idea, if anyone had an idea where they were. Tech devices had run out of battery early on and no one could pinpoint their location on paper maps as the earthquake had changed so much of the terrain.

The tension between soldiers quietly simmered for a few days. It left the civilians edgy and discontent. Minor squabbles would often break out, and Kaine was usually the only person willing to help end the disputes with more than a yell for everyone to be quiet. She thought a break in the tension was coming when Marcus started wandering off for hours at a time, but quickly realized how wrong she was when he returned to camp with a wolf that he had shot. He used the wolf's presence to spur the civilians into panic, but Kaine was more worried about the new glint in his eyes. Humans as a species had a predisposition towards bloodlust, and she was worried that Marcus had already embraced his. When the wolf's head ended up on a pole just outside the camp, she knew that things were only going to get worse.

It was the next day that events came to a head. Yet again, Jack and Max were arguing over a matter that Kaine considered to be trivial. They were shouting at each other, gesturing wildly, caught up in the fight, when Jack suddenly pushed the older soldier. He couldn't have known that the ground would suddenly break away, sending Max tumbling down a very steep hill with a lot of very big rocks. It startled everyone and they froze in shock until Kaine and the civilian nurse, Angela, quickly scrambled down the hill in pursuit. What they found at the bottom could barely be recognized as human and left the kinder woman in tears. Kaine was merely numb, already wondering how the power dynamic would shift with the death of the strong leader.

Max's death hit the entire group hard. The stability that he and James had tried to build was easily shattered. However, it didn't take long before Marcus and Jack to start jockeying for power again. This time James was alone, and was easily usurped for the leadership position. It wasn't enough, though, as some of the civilians continued to look to the soft spoken soldier for advice and guidance. Rather than appreciate his contribution, Marcus and Jack saw James as a threat. Their hatred of him was clear to Kaine, and she tried to warn him, but James refused to believe her. He firmly said that he believed they would not harm him, a fellow soldier.

That night, Kaine was woken by the sounds of a quiet struggle. Instantly alert, she opened her eyes in time to see Jack throw a gagged James to the ground as Marcus shot him in the head with a silenced pistol. It was so strange, she thought that she must be dreaming. The thought flew out the window when Marcus saw her and instantly pointed the gun at her. "You tell, you die," he warned quietly, even with a smile tucked into the corners of his mouth. With a chill, the redhead realized that he enjoyed killing. It was fear that made her nod and close her eyes as they dragged the body away, the rest of the group still blissfully unaware. She didn't sleep the rest of the night.

James was not the last. Any challenge to the rule of Jack and Marcus was dealt with swiftly and violently. Their open hostility towards Kaine left the redhead forced to the very fringes of the camp, farthest excluded and least protected. In time, their cruel mannerisms were copied and adopted. The young married couple were beaten severely for questioning Jack's right to their share of water, but it was their friend that beat them. It was like the beginnings of a cult, where the word of Marcus or Jack was law and any who did not agree were fiercely persecuted.

Angela was raped and murdered when she refused to sleep with Jack. The high-school boy was pushed off the nearby cliff for calling Marcus a sadistic bastard after the soldier had enjoyed beating the young man's girlfriend. Said girlfriend was later shot when she tried to steal some supplies in order to escape. In the week of Jack and Marcus' rule, the group dwindled from eighteen to ten. Kaine's only hope lay in the reassurances of James and Max. The company that had organized the hike knew the general location they would be in. Rescue would come, she was sure. But the date of their scheduled return came and went with no sign of any rescuers. There was no way to know if anyone was looking at all.

In the beginnings of the third week, Kaine began to fear for the life of the elderly college professor, Chris. He had started talking about how the group should start moving south. Those first few days they had been mainly moving north, so it was safe to assume that if they went south they would eventually find some sign of the city they'd come from. It was a common thought that Kaine had entertained, but Jack and Marcus saw it as a threat. They'd become so obsessed with their power over the lives of others that the idea of losing that power to safety was abhorrent.

One morning, Jack physically assaulted Chris, nearly shoving the teacher into the fire. "I'm bored," he declared with an evil smile. "Let's play a game of hide-and-seek." Then he pulled his pistol from the holster on the belt and pointed it at the terrified older man. "You get to hide. I'll even give you a head start."

Chris wasted no time, running into the woods as quickly as he could, while the others laughed and quickly gathered their weapons. Some bore rifles while others had fashioned clubs out of heavy branches that had fallen. Kaine had her combat knife and a pistol, but she knew it wasn't enough to help Chris in a real fight. Instead she quickly took off after him, hoping to hide him until she could get him to safety. None of the others had really explored the surrounding woods, so she was confidant in her ability to outsmart them, but not in Chris' ability to avoid them.

Weaving through the underbrush, Kaine kept her ears open. Again and again she could hear shots fired as the people with rifles tried to herd Chris in a certain direction. They were playing with him, forcing him along a dangerous path. The entire event left a horribly sour taste in the redhead's mouth as she ran, desperate for even a glance of the elderly gentleman.

Finally she saw him, hunkered under a fallen lung. He was breathing hard and scared out of his mind, but seemed unhurt. Kaine knew of a hidden cave close by, having seen a fox use it the week before, and thought she could get Chris there before anyone noticed. Quietly, she gave a short hiss, catching the professor's attention.

She met his eyes for a second. Only a second. He was so terrified; he was begging her to let him live. Before she could tell him that she was there to help, not hurt, Marcus suddenly appeared, swinging his branch club with deadly accuracy. Kaine watched as Chris' skull caved in, blood spraying in a morbidly beautiful arc. His body hit the ground with a quiet thud that the soldier was all too aware of.

The blood, the screams, the death. It was all so familiar. It was the reality that Kaine faced every day on the battlefield. But this was so much worse. On the battlefield, there was no soldier standing over the dead, innocent man, yelling in jubilant glee. There was no sadistic smirk as a bloody branch was thrust toward her face. There was no, "You're next, bitch."

She missed the battlefield.

That night, the group celebrated Chris' murder. Like usual, Kaine remained on the fringes, watching from the shadow. She wondered what had happened to the twenty kind people that she had met a little less than a month ago. The change from those companions to the eight humans she saw now was gradual, but still so devastating. Was this the truth of human nature? That even those who should know better, who should be above such savage behavior, succumbed so easily because it was what the person in power did? She wanted to believe that they were still good people, wanted to have faith that their hearts were still kind, but recognized that wanting would accomplish nothing. The truth was that she was in danger. They all were, but being on the outside and looking in, she could see the danger that the rest had made themselves blind to. So it was that she waited for everyone to fall into exhausted sleep, knowing that celebrating so late meant that they would sleep late into the day. Only once everything was quite and still did she enter the camp proper, grabbing her bag and starting the pack her few belongings and supplies.

Putting the last bottle of water in her bag, Kaine quickly sealed the pack and got to her feet. Everyone was still asleep, peacefully waiting for the sun to rise on a new day. There was no telling what shape they would all be in when the sun set once more. Maybe there would be fewer people left to worry about. Maybe there would be another hunt through the forest. Whatever would happen, there was little chance that it would be positive.

Kaine wasn't going to stick around to find out. She'd read this story already; she knew how these situation progressed. This wasn't an island and they weren't a bunch of school kids, but they were following the same script. Wolves for boars, guns for fire, yet the results were no different.

Armed only with her skills and a portion of the surviving supplies, Kaine quietly slipped out of the camp and never looked back. There was no guarantee that she would be able to get out of the forest. The land was still unstable, there were wild animals everywhere, and no one was sure where they were anymore. That didn't slow her steps. Her chances of survival were better on her own.

They always had been.

_Disclaimer: The use of the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne Division was strictly intended to provide a sense of reality. The portrayals of the people from those divisions is entirely fictional; and resemblance to real people or events is entirely unintentional._


End file.
